Join Us

Hate under cloak of religion

"The Southern Poverty Law Center is an organization with deep roots in
the civil rights movement. Its ingenious lawsuits helped break the back
of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist factions, and in recent
years, it has joined the Anti-Defamation League as a reliable monitor
of hate groups.

"The Family Research Council is an influential Washington-based advocacy
group with deep roots in the religious right. Its annual political
forum, the Values Voter Summit, has become a nearly obligatory stop for
ambitious Republican office-seekers hoping to win the support of
so-called values voters. In recent years, the council has given an
increasing share of its attention to opposing marriage equality and
open military service by gays and lesbians.

"Now, the two groups are locked in a sharp confrontation that raises
crucial questions about where the expression of religiously based views
on social issues ends and hate speech begins.

"Last week, the law center added the Family Research Council to its list
of more than 930 active hate groups, citing the anti-gay rhetoric of
its leaders and researchers, which have included calls to
re-criminalize consensual sex between individuals of the same gender.
The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as one with 'beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people,
typically for their immutable characteristics.'

"The council's president, former Louisiana lawmaker Tony Perkins,
reacted angrily to the designation, calling it 'slanderous' and
demanding an apology. 'The left is losing the debate over ideas and the
direction of public policy, so all that is left for them is character
assassination,' Perkins said, insisting that his group 'will continue
to champion marriage and family as the foundation of our society and
will not acquiesce to those seeking to silence the Judeo-Christian
views held by millions of Americans.'

"Other conservative commentators also have assailed listing the council
as a hate group, calling it an affront to protected speech. That is a
superficially compelling argument, but it won't withstand scrutiny. It
is perfectly possible for a church or an organization associated with a
denomination or religious tendency — as the Family Research Council is
with evangelical Protestantism — to oppose, say, marriage equality as a
departure from tradition and traditional notions of civic virtue
without defaming gays and lesbians as a group.

"But the council goes well beyond that. Over the years, it has published
statistical compendiums purporting to quantify the 'evils' of
homosexuality. ...At various times, its
spokesmen have spuriously alleged that the gay rights movement's goal 'is to go after children' and that child molestation is more likely to
occur in households with gay parents. Last week, one of its senior
fellows, Peter Sprigg, told reporters on a conference call concerning
repeal of the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy that 'homosexuals in the
military are three times more likely to commit sexual assaults than
heterosexuals are relative to their numbers.'

"Such rhetoric is eerily reminiscent of that with which religiously
affiliated opponents of African American equality once defended
segregation. It wasn't all that long ago that some of them argued
against school integration because, they alleged, black adolescents
were uniquely unable to control sexual impulses and, therefore, would
assault white schoolgirls. Exhortations against 'race mixing' were
commonplace pulpit messages short decades ago, though we now recognize
them as hate speech. It's past time to do the same with rhetoric that
denigrates gays and lesbians.

"So long as even the most objectionable religious dogma stays under the
church roof, it's a constitutionally protected view. People's religious
beliefs — even when noxious — are a private matter. Our churches are
free to order their internal affairs as they will — to set the terms of
sacramental marriage as they see fit, to discriminate in the selection
of their clergy, to racially segregate their membership or to separate
the sexes in their schools or places of worship.

"However, when a group sets out to impose its views on the rest of
society by lobbying for public policies or laws, it can no longer claim
special protections or an exemption from the norms of civil discourse
simply because its views are formed by religious beliefs. This is
precisely the dodge the Family Research Council has been running."